


I Miss Her, A Little

by elowen_p



Category: The Owl House (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Gen, luz makes the executive decision that going back home isn't worth the risk of not coming back, this is a sad one bois
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-12 12:26:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29634618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elowen_p/pseuds/elowen_p
Summary: Luz feels guilty all the time.It wouldn't be so bad if she didn't know that she deserved it.~“But you can do magic here, isn’t that all you’ve ever wanted?” Willow asks.“How can you miss being there when you fit in so much better here?” Gus says.“They didn’t deserve you.” Amity snorts, like it’s obvious.
Relationships: Eda Clawthorne & Luz Noceda, Lilith Clawthorne & Luz Noceda
Comments: 4
Kudos: 63
Collections: All things Disney





	I Miss Her, A Little

Luz feels guilty all the time now.

Not guilty enough that she’s consumed by it. Not guilty enough that it stops her from doing anything. It’s just something in the background, something that pulls at her a little as she runs and fights and generally enjoys life more than she ever has before.

She mentions it to her friends. They don’t quite understand it.

“But you can do magic here, isn’t that all you’ve ever wanted?” Willow asks.

“How can you miss being there when you fit in so much better here?” Gus says.

“They didn’t deserve you.” Amity snorts, like it’s obvious.

The last one makes Luz feel something different. She hopes she’ll figure out what sometime soon, once the guilt has ebbed away and there’s enough room for her to step back and look at her thoughts from a distance. Once there’s enough room that she might be able to examine the shape they take.

The problem is that Luz isn’t even guilty for what she’s done. If all she had done to her mom was leave her all alone in a different dimension then Luz wouldn’t even be feeling bad. It’s what Luz is _going_ to do that keeps the low buzzing of guilt close.

Because Luz is _never_ going back.

How could she? How could she return to a world where she can’t do magic, where she never fit in?

(where they didn’t deserve her)

Luz would do anything to stay in the Boiling Isles forever and considering the fact that all she has to do is _not leave?_ Luz would have to have some twisted sort of mind to want to go back.

Her mom was going to send her to send her somewhere to get her imagination stamped out of her for three months. What if Luz returned and she tried to do that again? Then she might never get an opportunity to return to the Boiling Isles and then-

Then Luz would be feeling significantly worse things than a little guilt buzzing at the edge of her consciousness.

So she stays.

~

Luz is staring at the door that would take her back home.

Eda looks at her from over the cover of her magazine. “You planning to set that on fire, kid?”

“Yeah.” Luz answers without remembering that she probably shouldn’t be saying that sort of thing. _Oh well,_ she thinks. It’s not like Eda’s going to judge her.

Eda puts down her magazine and raises a judging eyebrow in Luz’s direction.

Luz looks back at her and narrows her eyes. They’ve never talked about Luz going home and she had really been enjoying that status quo. “Your eyebrows are judging me.” she informs Eda. Just in case she wasn’t aware yet.

She nods slowly. “Yeah, they tend to do that kid.” She pauses. Like she needs some time to come to terms with the unprecedented fact that Luz would do anything not to stay here forever. “Bet it’s ‘cause they were wondering why you were going to set your only way back home on fire.”

“I guess that would make sense.” Luz answers, “It would kind of be an odd thing for me to do, from the perspective of your eyebrows.” She tries her best to look serious since this _is_ a serious conversation despite how they’re both pretending that it isn’t.

They stare each other down for a while.

King comes and interrupts before either of them can break the stalemate. Eda looks particularly affronted when this happens, like whenever she’s avoiding telling Luz something she doesn’t use this exact same trick.

It’s odd. Luz thought Eda would have realised she’s a fast learner by now.

~

In a particularly unexpected turn of events it’s Lilith that ends of being the one to confront Luz about the whole thing.

She just had a fight with Eda. Obviously. Because the only time Luz ever runs into Lilith is when she’s just about to fight Eda or when they’ve just finished. It ends in a draw, like it always does, and Luz wonders why Lilith keeps coming back to fight Eda when she must know that it’s going to end the same way it always does.

Luz voices these opinions and Lilith squints at her with an expression that reminds her of Eda and her judge-y eyebrows. “Do humans not have families?” she asks, her tone full of honest confusion.

Luz isn’t quite sure how to answer that. She stays silent, waiting for King to interrupt like last time but remembers that King isn’t actually here right now and decides not to answer anyway. Maybe she’ll get lucky and someone else will interrupt.

“Well?” Lilith prompts, impatient now. “Do you have a family, human?”

Luz opens and closes her mouth a couple of times, “Why do you care?” she asks, which isn’t her best comeback but does the job of allowing her to avoid the question.

Lilith has the gall to roll her eyes. “I care about precisely _two_ people in the Boiling Isles.” She holds up two fingers to illustrate her point. “My awful sister,” She puts a finger down, “and my wonderful protege.” She puts the other finger down so that her hand is in the shape of a fist. An irrational part of Luz’s brain wonders if she’s about to get punched. “So I think it’s understandable enough that I might like to know if the human that has the full _adoration_ of my two favourite people might be leaving them someday soon.”

“Nope,” Luz starts backing away cause Lilith looks kind of angry and hence very scary, “No one’s leaving here. I am a-okay staying right here. Forever.”

“Oh.” Lilith says, expression turning surprised. Her eyes aren’t narrowed anymore and it makes them look far larger than normal. “I thought you were leaving.”

Luz looks at Lilith and feels something full of far too familiar guilt stirring in her chest. “That’s weird. I’ve never thought that before.” she says, because it’s true.

“But you have a family?” Lilith says because even if her and Luz don’t talk much she’s still one of the smartest people Luz knows, which is saying something since Luz is surrounded by geniuses these days.

“Yep. I’m staying though.”

Lilith frowns. “You should visit them. Family’s important.” Luz can feel herself starting to back away, the buzz of guilt rising again, but Lilith interrupts before she can get very far. “I’m sure that either Amity or Eda would drag you back before you could be gone for too long anyway.”

The words cause Luz to freeze. She hadn’t thought of that before.

Lilith had clearly been aiming for the comment to sound offhand, an afterthought, but from the way she’s a little tenser than normal Luz can tell that she really was trying to reassure her. It makes Luz wonder it Lilith might have enough room in her heart to care about three people one day.

“I’ll think about it.” she promises.

Luz keeps her eyes fixed firmly on the floor as she says it but she can tell that the words make Lilith smile a little anyway.

~

Luz really does think about it. She thinks about it constantly, replaces the buzz of guilt with wonderings over whether she trusts that her loved ones have their claws dug into her deep enough that they could never let her go.

One night, lying in bed and wondering the same things as always, she comes to the conclusion that she does. After the certainty has settled itself in her bones she has the best nights sleep she’s had in weeks.

In the morning she decides that she’ll wait a little. Let the certainty sink in a bit deeper. Let the amount she loves the people she’s surrounded herself with grow until the idea she won’t be able to return becomes ridiculous.

But then the Emperor comes and the portal burns and none of it really matters.

Luz starts feeling guilty again. She doubts she’ll ever stop.

**Author's Note:**

> was thinking about the adaptability of kids and then the adaptability of Luz and then her adapting so well to not having her mum around that she goes 'yea i'm cool with this' and just gets rid of any intention she had of going back
> 
> also i cannot believe that this is the second fic for the owl house i've done and neither of them has had lumity as the focus like i'm gay it's literally my responsibility to society
> 
> anyway, hope you liked it!!
> 
> me on tumblr: https://elowenp.tumblr.com/


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